Page 39 of Shared by my Ex’s Best Friends (Twisted Desires #2)
Chapter thirty-nine
ETHAN
T he mornings are my favorite.
There’s a hush to them that feels like ours alone—before phones start buzzing and the real world starts pulling at the edges. Just soft light, sleepy bodies, and the gentle hum of a house that still feels like it’s stretching awake.
The house smells like coffee and toast. It’s warm, comforting, and feels like home.
The scent drifts from the kitchen, where Liam’s dressed in a crisp white tee and pajama pants, newspaper spread out in front of him at the table like it’s the 1950s. There’s a yellow highlighter next to his plate, because apparently grocery deals are serious business.
Jake’s perched on the edge of the counter, bare-chested in his flannel pajama bottoms, peeling a banana. He’s already declared he doesn’t want breakfast. Which means he’ll eat half of mine.
And then there’s Maya. God, Maya.
She’s leaning against the far counter, tea mug clutched between both hands, steam curling up and brushing her cheek. Her oversized sleep shirt is slipping off one shoulder, and her hair’s a messy halo, wild from sleep.
She rubs at her eyes with the heel of her hand, blinking toward the sunlight pouring through the window. The golden beams catch her face just right, making her look like something out of a painting.
She catches me staring and gives me a slow, sleepy smile over the rim of her mug.
That’s when it hits me—like it does every morning.
We live here. Together. In this slightly-too-big house with its creaky stairs and unpredictable plumbing and the back door that sticks when it rains.
A house where someone always leaves a cabinet open and someone else always stubs their toe on the edge of the coffee table.
It’s perfect.
We fought over the rooms when we first moved in—Jake wanted the one with the most windows, swearing it was “optimal for morning vibes,” until Liam, ever practical, pointed out that he’s usually up past midnight playing poker or watching late-night sports reruns.
He gave it up begrudgingly, but only after securing the right to choose our bed frame.
Unpacking took three days, a dozen takeout boxes, and at least one minor argument over whose idea it was to bring a broken lamp.
That first night, we collapsed on the living room floor—boxes still everywhere, Maya tucked under Jake’s arm, her head in my lap, Liam’s legs sprawled out . She fell asleep with one hand resting on her belly. Even though she’s not showing yet, she’s already so protective of our little one.
I remember thinking, I could live like this forever.
We’ve fallen into this strange, beautiful rhythm. No two days look the same, but somehow it works.
Liam makes lists no one asked for—there’s a whiteboard on the fridge covered in color-coded notes. Appointments. Trash pickup. Vitamin reminders. It’s infuriating and weirdly comforting.
He’s always the first to refill the paper towels, the one who knows when Maya’s prenatal checkup is without looking at a calendar.
Jake, on the other hand, is complete chaos. Organized chaos, I guess. He’ll spend a morning fixing a leaky faucet without instructions, but leave a trail of wet towels and cereal bowls behind him like some human tornado.
He claims he doesn’t care about the house aesthetic—but there are suddenly throw pillows on every couch, including one that says “Home is where the snacks are.”
Maya rolls her eyes at him constantly, but never without smiling.
I do most of the cooking, though it’s a team effort when Maya feels up to it. When she doesn’t—when the nausea hits or her body just says nope —she sits on the stool at the island, chin propped in her hand, and hums while I stir something on the stove.
Sometimes it’s aimless, sometimes it’s a lullaby she swears she doesn’t remember learning. She’ll sneak bites of whatever I’m making when she thinks I’m not looking.
I always notice and I love it.
Jake walks past her this morning and kisses the top of her head, mid-banana. “You look like you were hit by a truck,” he teases.
“I’m blaming you ,” she says, voice gravelly with sleep, but playful. “You kicked all night.”
Jake holds up his hands. “Not guilty. I gently nudged. ”
“You were sprawled across the bed like a human starfish,” Liam mutters from behind the paper.
Maya grins into her coffee, and I can’t help but grin too. The warmth of them fills me up like sunlight through the window.
Some nights, the four of us pile onto the couch, limbs tangled, blankets twisted, the glow of the TV across the room.
The reality show we’re watching is objectively awful—something about couples surviving in the wilderness with no food and way too much drama—but we can’t stop watching.
Maya shouts at the screen like the contestants can hear her. Jake provides running commentary in a terrible Scottish accent, mimicking the host, and Liam quietly judges the entire production from beneath a fuzzy throw blanket he pretends he’s not using.
Maya eventually ends up sprawled across all of us, her head on Jake’s chest, her legs tossed over mine, Liam curled behind her like he’s standing guard. Her phone slips from her hand somewhere between commercial breaks, and her breathing evens out.
Other nights, we don’t even make it to the couch.
We get as far as the hallway, or the foot of the stairs, or the middle of the kitchen floor after dinner, and suddenly we’re wrapped around each other, hands exploring familiar skin like it’s the first time.
There’s laughter and whispered promises and soft gasps, and afterward, we fall asleep wherever we landed, blankets pulled from the nearest room, limbs draped and tangled. Hearts beating in sync.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. Of course it isn’t. No relationship is perfect.
Some mornings, the air feels heavier. Maya’s hormones are all over the place, and some days she wakes up nauseous and irritable. Once, she asked Jake for bacon and then nearly cried when the smell hit her.
She snapped at him, and Jake, caught off guard, snapped back.
“Why did you even ask for it if you were gonna get sick?” he said, more wounded than angry.
“I didn’t know!” she barked, then immediately covered her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just feel like my body’s not mine anymore.”
Jake sat beside her in silence, then gently pried her hands away and kissed her forehead. “Okay. Then I’ll just make pancakes and smell like syrup instead. Better?”
She nodded, eyes glassy.
Liam is always trying to help, but sometimes that looks like over-planning. He means well, but he’ll fill her whole week with doctor’s appointments, rest periods, meal preps, and “fun time,” which is somehow both adorable and mildly infuriating.
“Liam,” Maya said one afternoon, staring at his planner. “You scheduled when I should nap.”
“I didn’t schedule it. I suggested it.”
“At exactly 3:15 p.m.?”
“…Strongly suggested.”
She tried not to laugh. “You do know I’m a human, not a conference room, right?”
He flushed but didn’t argue. That night, he cleaned the entire bathroom, restocked all her teas, and folded three loads of her laundry without saying a word. Maya kissed his cheek as she passed, and that was that.
I mess up, too. I forget things—small things, but they matter. Like her ginger chews when we go out. Or the heating pad when she’s cramping. I see it in her eyes when I slip up. The little flicker of disappointment she tries to hide.
“Sorry,” I’ll say, every time, pulling her into my arms. “I should’ve remembered.”
Her shoulders will slump against mine, and she’ll sigh. “It’s okay.”
I hold her tighter. Sometimes she doesn’t want solutions. Sometimes she just wants to be held.
We’re always learning.
We don’t shove things under the rug or pretend they don’t matter, and we never go to bed angry. Even if it means sitting up at one in the morning in our pajamas, bleary-eyed and exhausted, until the air is clear again.
Jake is always the first to break the silence after a fight. “Okay, I was a dick,” he’ll say, rubbing the back of his neck. “Can we skip to the part where you forgive me and I rub your feet?”
Liam apologizes in quiet actions—refilling Maya’s water bottle before she asks, leaving sticky notes on her mirror that say things like You’re strong or You’re doing amazing, sweetheart in his careful handwriting.
I wrap her up in my arms and breathe her in like she’s the answer to every question I didn’t know I had.
On Sundays, we don’t do much of anything. We curl up on the massive couch—Jake still insists it was “architecturally impossible” to get it through the front door, even though Liam and I managed it while he yelled encouragement from the porch.
Maya stretches across our laps like a spoiled cat, her phone in one hand, thumb scrolling lazily through her pregnancy app. The app tells her the baby is the size of a lemon this week.
Jake raises an eyebrow. “A lemon? That’s kind of… aggressive. I like that for us.”
“I thought last week it was a plum?” I say, reaching for the coffee mug Maya abandoned on the side table. “Does it really grow that fast?”
“Plums are soft,” she murmurs, half-asleep, not really answering my question. “Lemons are zesty. This kid’s got bite.”
Liam smirks. “If it inherits Jake’s stubbornness, we’re in trouble.”
Maya grins, resting a hand over the slight swell of her belly. “Then it’ll also be loyal. And reckless. And full of heart.”
We haven’t heard the heartbeat yet. Haven’t seen the baby on a screen. But it’s there.
We feel it in the silence that falls when Maya goes still, her palm pressing instinctively to her stomach. We feel it in the way we argue about cribs and paint colors and where to put the changing table.
We don’t always agree, but we all care.
There’s this buzz of anticipation in the house. Like we’re all holding our breath for the moment everything changes. But we’re not rushing it.
There’s beauty in the waiting. In the in-between.
We’re suspended here—before appointments, before names and night feedings and early wake ups.
Before all of it, it’s just us.
A house with chipped paint and mismatched coffee mugs and too many blankets on the couch.
A girl we love, a baby on the way, and the kind of life you build one morning at a time.